The invention relates to a process for preparing polymer materials derived from the petrochemical industry and/or biosourced, comprising in their composition biological entities chosen from enzymes and microorganisms enabling them to be degraded.
Polymer materials have been the subject of intensive use in recent years, in particular in the field of plastics. This intensive exploitation for common uses has been reflected by an accumulation of plastics in our environment, which is a source of visual nuisance, congestion of refuse sites and pollution of soils and marine media. Thus, as a result of their intrinsic properties, especially their resistance to degradation, the treatment of waste derived from these materials currently constitutes a real environmental and economic problem.
Several solutions have been proposed, among which are biodegradable plastic materials. Their formulation is in particular directed toward being adapted to degradation by microorganisms of the environment. However, this degradation generally takes place partially. In addition, it requires extremely favorable conditions detailed especially in standard EN 13432. These conditions are encountered under artificial conditions, such as industrial composts. For example, these materials are generally degraded at temperatures above 40° C. These temperature conditions are expensive to put in place, from an energy and also a financial point of view.
The standard alternatives for processing waste, such as incineration or dumping in a refuse site, prove to be detrimental even when they are applied to biodegradable polymer materials, since their degradation does not take place totally.
In addition, biodegradable materials have impaired physical properties, especially in terms of resistance to moisture, to temperature and to mechanical elongation. These deficiencies make them unsuitable for use in standard plastics processing operations such as injection molding or extrusion, and incompatible with the targeted applications.
Thus, these biodegradable materials, although promising, do not satisfy the requirements of industrialists and environmental requirements.
Materials consisting of polymers supplemented with a plant-based filler to improve the degradability of said materials have also been proposed. However, this degradation was due only to the degradation of said plant-based filler, which necessarily leads to a partial degradation. In addition, such a solution proved to be insufficient since it does not allow the mechanical properties of the polymer to be preserved. Such a material is thus also limited as regards its uses in the field of plastics processing.
There is thus a need for biodegradable materials, which have mechanical properties equivalent to those of plastics of petrochemical origin and which are suitable for use in the standard operations of plastics processing, said materials being able to be degraded totally, at an acceptable rate of degradation, and of doing so under temperature, pH and humidity conditions that are compatible with those generally encountered in the natural environment.